Halo: Master Chief Collection Goes Gold

343 Industries has announced that its “Halo: The Master Chief Collection” has gone gold, meaning the final master copy has been produced and has been sent off for replication.

Xbox One owners are now able to pre-order and pre-download the game which will be a fairly massive, a whopping 45GB install file to download. 343’s Dan Ayoub explains the size:

“To recap, Halo: The Master Chief Collection contains four complete Halo games, every multiplayer map ever released (including DLC from console and PC) across each game, a complete remaster of Halo 2 with all-new audio and Blur’s mind-blowing cinematics, and all of this is tied together with (and enhanced by) a revolutionary user interface.”

The full game is bigger than that of course. In fact, a Day One patch at launch is expected to come in at a whopping 20Gb, mostly related to “features and multiplayer content”. It has to be that size as the 45 GB install is almost all of the usable space of a single Blu-ray. Ayoub says:

“Yes, the update is large, but we weren’t about to cut corners to save disc space. This ensures that you are getting every bit of Halo goodness we can fit in. Our work is not done, however, as we continue to tune, tweak and optimize the online experience to ensure a smooth multiplayer launch. This will continue right up until launch day.”

The global release date has also been moved up, with many countries expected to get the game the same day as North America – November 11th. One element that won’t make it to day one is Halo 4’s episodic co-op “Spartan Ops” with all ten episodes to be released in December.